captainsblog | Time for captainsblog's annual Bluff the Listener Game!

This week's Wait Wait was particularly good. I'd recommend downloading it, even.

As always, the show includes a bluffing game feature, where the panelists surround one strange-but-true news story with two similar ones. Often, the real one turns out to be the least probable of the three.

So it is in my own real life, where this morning's paper brought three separate stories of people, near and far, who grasped just a little of the holiday spirit without QUITE getting all the way through the message. Only one of these is presented in its entirety, and without any editorial alteration. No liquids, and no peeking! (Won't do you any good anyway, since the fake stories are only slight alterations of real ones, so why waste time when there are no prizes?)

Our first not-quite-a-Christmas Story comes from Paula Poundstone.

Illinois first lady Patti Blagojevich has sent a note to her neighbors apologizing for the media attention that has besieged her Chicago neighborhood.

In the message sent over the weekend, Blagojevich acknowledged "the media barrage that has descended" on her neighborhood.

Cameramen and reporters have been camped outside the governor's home since Rod Blagojevich was arrested on federal corruption charges Dec. 9.

Patti Blagojevich writes that while she and her husband choose a life in public service, their neighbors didn't. She says that she hopes the scrutiny will subside soon for the sake of her children and the neighbor's families.

Blagojevich goes on to wish her neighbors a "happy fucking New Year."

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A Buffalo man told police two men, including his manager, forced him from his home Friday evening and drove him to the restaurant where he works and told him to clean grease off a Dumpster.

The man, who lives off Hertel Avenue, said the pair forced their way into his bedroom by kicking open the door.

He also told police when he was done the manager gave him his paycheck and instructed him not to go to the police or "he would end up dead somewhere."

The victim, who also had his cell phone taken, reported the incident to police Saturday.

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A woman whose purse was snatched in a department store parking lot Sunday afternoon chased the thief, who ended up dropping the bag and surrendering money from his own wallet to her, according to police.

The incident happened in the parking lot of Target, 2626 Delaware Ave., just after 2 p. m., according to a Buffalo police report.

The woman said her purse was taken as she was loading items into her car. She told police she chased the thief around some parked cars, and tackled him just as he was about to get into a waiting vehicle.

Apparently interpreting her loaded shopping bags as loaded weapons, the perpetrator reached into his own wallet, tossed a handful of twenties to the woman, and entered the getaway car. The maroon Mitsubishi Galant then headed south on Delaware.

The victim reported nothing had been taken from her purse, the police report said.

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All righty, then:
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